A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

It was totally unexpected, but one of the outcomes of September 11, nonetheless:The West witnessed a mass renewal of interest in Islamic art. So observed Belinda Luscombe of Time.com about six months after the event. She reported Islamic art exhibitions as far afield as the Honolulu Academy of Art and Montreal Museum. Enrollment in Islamic art courses leapt across the college landscape. This was definitely a welcome trend.

Obviously, Muslims were very pleased to see it happen. If art is a true representation of a people's worldview and culture, then increased interest in Islamic art could not have taken place at a better time. Major art institutes and museums put together galleries and exhibitions. So too did a number of Muslim associations in countries across Europe and North America.

Better late than never. Now a number of Muslim countries have demonstrated a serious interest in exhibiting Islamic art. (Read the articles of Qatar's Doha Muslim Art Museum and the Exhibition Islam project out of London inside).

And while these efforts and the people behind them have done an exceptional job showcasing the Islamic arts-allowing people a taste of its beauty and educating them in its composition and cultures-one essential aspect of what Islamic art is all about has not received attention yet. It has to do with Islam itself.

Consider the following.

Contrary to other religious arts, Islamic art and architecture do not have or espouse any "religious" representation. The reason is simple: Islamic art stems from and is inspired by the teachings of Islam, which all conform to its core principle that God is to be worshipped alone by, not just us humans, but all that He created in this universe, including the heavens and the earth themselves, and all that is between them.That means no ascribing of partners to God and revering Him as is His unrivaled due as the Supreme Creator and Omni-Powerful Lord of all beings.

This distinguishing feature of Islam, called tawheed, and all it implies, entail that all are equal before Allah as created servants, having native creaturely rights and subject to the same obligations irrespective of race, culture, or place:

"O People! Behold! We have created you all out of a male and a female, and have made you nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another.Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is the most righteous. Behold! Allah is all knowing, allaware" [49:13].

Scholars and specialists including many renowned artists acknowledge that while it is the purity of tawheed which has led people of all backgrounds throughout the ages to come into the realm of Islam wholeheartedly, it is in fact, its neutrality and fairness that made Islam adaptable to the cultures and arts they belonged to what Titus Burckhardt (whose essay on The Ka‘bah appears in this issue) termed the "void" in Islamic art.

Eventually, the cultures that embraced Islam self-changed and renovated (and revved up) their esthetic impulse with the teachings of Islam.They kept their distinctive local features.Yet there is no doubt that their inspired creativity is Islamic in nature. Real examples of this abound:The Dome of the Rock (Jerusalem, 692 CE), Alhambra Palace (Granada, 1238),Taj Mahal (India, 1632), and Sankore University (Timbuktu, early 15^th. Century). None of these is in essence a place of worship, but it is common knowledge that they are all stunning examples of Islamic art and architecture.

In addition, it is not uncommon today for researchers and archeologists to find relics of Islamic arts everywhere the civilization of Islam illumined.

Tawheed tremendously influenced Islamic art in its proscription of figural representation of living beings especially man. And while it is true that the main reason for this is to emphasize that creating living things is unique to Allah, this prohibition has had an even more profound effect on the ways art impacts us, not the least one making art an esthetic that extends our own space and adds to our environment without us seeing ourselves repeated in it.

The source of artistic inspiration is yet another dimension tawheed infinitely grants to Muslims whether producing or using art.This is best stated, in my opinion, in the hadeeth of Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alayhe wa sallam: "Indeed Allah is Beautiful and loves beauty," (Bukhari) and "Allah likes that if one does something he does it thoroughly" (Bayhaqi).Thus, for the Muslim, creating, utilizing, or sponsoring art is an act of worship.

These are but a few streams that run through the Muslim heart and mind when contemplating, making, or enjoying a piece of art at home or in public. One feels engaged, as in meditation, with his or her Lord. One experiences an instant sense of unity with the art and those behind it wherever they might be in Turkey, India, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, or in London.

Some Muslims lament that seemingly many in the West care little for Islam beyond its art and the delight it brings them.There may be truth in this. But ask yourself:What have you done to transform this inclination?

Art is, in fact, a natural gate to the two elements necessary to produce it: Islam or the source of guidance that gives it its unmistakable nature and Muslims who create it, for indeed art gives a truer and more accurate insight of those behind it and their environment.

We can begin by educating ourselves and others about these two elements which are natural parts of the ultimate ends of Islamic art. And without them, the nature, complexity, depth, and variety of human intentions and practices behind Islam will never be totally or correctly understood.

COMMENTING ON THE cover story of our last issue, The Virtues of Home and the Curriculum of Belief, a reader told me he sensed a lot of pessimism about the future of our children's education in the article, along with a negative tone toward the Muslim leadership prevailing in it.

So I asked a few readers to review that article, and the follow-up feature by the same mother (which you can read for yourself in this issue). It continues the critique about how we Muslims are educating our children and suggests a few practical solutions to the teaching challenges it claims our community can either confront immediately or suffer the swerving of yet another generation from the path of divine knowledge.

Throughout, it keeps an eye on the spiritual and intellectual dimensions that form the basis of a good education according to the revealed wellsprings of Islam. The reviewers were not terribly confident that our author's ideas would effectively change the educational outlook in our communities. But to a person, they said that a thorough reading of the essays inspired in them a profound sense of refusal to submit to so grim a forecast for our children's learning horizon.

Let me be clear about this.We would trouble no one with these writings if we didn't think their discussion and ideas had both strength and usefulness. In fact, we published them precisely because we believe (1) that the education of our children has, potentially, a very hopeful future; (2) that, collectively, our community is moving forward and increasing its awareness about the sterling possibilities of a genuinely integrated, holistic education, as well as its pursuit of just that aim; and (3) that, more Muslim families are starting to take charge of the education of their children and significantly alter their priorities for that reason. Still, this should not be construed to mean that we are destined to meet the massive problems of our children's education successfully. Nor is it likely that our children will either soon or easily have the kind of education worth the name and heritage we call "Islamic"- instruction that will free their native sensibilities and God-given curiosities to learn, grow their minds, challenge, discover, glorify, believe, and in the process become the fully "human" beings that Allah has created all people to be.

No contradiction here. Many Muslim educators readily hold out an optimistic branch about the future of our education in the West.Then I ask them to scale that limb and predict a major communal realization of our educational objectives in the near future.

They balk. Strikingly, this is not a Muslim-only predicament. It is common knowledge that all other communities seriously suffer, to a largely similar degree, from the current dire educational environment virtually everywhere-private and public.

This is understandable, since ultimately, education is a-no, the, human problem. No doubt, you too have read comparable "hopeful-but-don't-hold-meto-it" comments by schooling experts from varied backgrounds. The reason for this seemingly paradoxical position is simple. Obviously, education represents one of the most complex human undertakings. On one level, it seeks to change and train humans for unique and countless sophisticated roles in life. But at a more essential depth, since their inception in the nineteenth century in the secular West, the modern public schools have increasingly come into the ruthless grip of those who control the capital in society.

Today's schools are directed to teach and train students to become professionals who can meet the demands of business, politicians, and power. And while our schooling systems seem to churn out these worldly cogs adequately, taking children en masse for an extended absence from family for up to 17 years in essentially non-functioning, non-serving roles does not help them get the education they need to meet the human

demands of the many other functions they ought to be performing in and for the societies of which they are a part. How self-defeating! How seriously diminishing is this fact when it comes to the transcendent purposes that are truly native to education.

More importantly, the current system of education is founded on two main assumptions: (1) That the concept of the common school can and will endure; and (2) that the notion of "childhood" will survive. Both of these suppositions have been seriously questioned and challenged in recent years. Considering the everincreasing cost of running schools (any school), the loss of a common vision or unifying values, the fast and highly advanced rate of technological innovation and the internet, the upsurge in violence and the sea-changes in the attitude and behavior of children at schools, and the rampant rise of school-based sexual activity and its diseases-it is not hard to see why many in the West are not presently prepared to continue to promote these two underlying ideals of public schooling.

Admittedly, there are many ways to interpret these facts. But we will simply point to one inexorable reality: Change in the very soul and structure of education has become inevitable. I have faith that this transformation will ultimately increase the authority of families in the schooling of their children. And this alone makes for a huge reservoir of optimism about the future of our children's learning.

Aljumuah Magazine

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

On the Nature and Exposition of Islamic Art

Family, Hope, and the Future of Education

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